


Doomed Youth

by plzdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, References to Suicide, Soldier Castiel, Soldier Dean, WW2, World War II, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 05:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7789207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plzdean/pseuds/plzdean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an unexpected truce means Dean is let free, he finds he finally has a reason to make it to the end of the war: Castiel, the blue-eyed enemy solider. But carrying the object both allies and enemies seek so desperately comes with consequences, especially after he finds himself stranded and alone in northern France, desperate to make it back to safety. Unlikely alliances are formed, and danger ensues for both sides as they struggle to make it out alive at the end of the war together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> pls forgive any historical inaccuracies as they occur (my bf was being so picky that it isn't based on real events so I have to say a disclaimer that this is a made up story lmao)

They say you never forget the sound of an artillery shell cracking above your head for the first time, the sound of men's screams that ensue moments later. Like thunder, they said. Like death. Like the sky is cracking in two and anything that is good in the world is disintegrating with it.

No. That was not how that sound made Dean Winchester feel, crouched in the corner of a derelict church with five other men, knowing there was no way in hell the six of them would make it out alive. To him, that crack, those screams, sounded like the names of every person he'd ever loved. His mother, his brother, his uncle Bobby. Sometimes his father, if in those moments he allowed himself to forget every hurtful thing he'd ever said. Jo, back at home. Her brother Ash and her mother Ellen. Every forgotten name of every girl he'd kissed; every boy who ever caught his gaze off guard way back in high school.

"We're gonna die." mumbled Gabriel - a young failed paratrooper turned infantry soldier, of only 21 years old. Older than Dean by two years, but out here age meant nothing. He was a child like the rest of them; a group of dishevelled teenagers thrust into a pit of blood and death and torture. That's all they were; even the sergeants and corporals who barked orders at them back at the base. Boys. Children, out of their depths. " _We're gonna die. We're gonna die. We're gonna die."_

The shelling stopped and the men looked to each other, praying their optimism wasn't naivety disguised. Garth reached out towards Gabriel in the darkness and squeezed his shoulder; hope. _We might actually make it out of here with minds and body parts intact._

German voices suddenly startled them, growing nearer, threatening, but unnervingly unconcerned in tone, a joke, a game, as if they were never really convinced there had been a soul trapped inside the building to begin with before they decided to fire.

"I can get us out of here." Promised Garth. "There's a back door, I saw it on the way in." He said, moving slightly to peer around the corner of the wall they were huddled behind. He nodded towards it. “See.”

Gabriel moved to stand almost too harshly, and Benny - the oldest of the group - yanked him back down again with a hiss. "Do you want to get yourself killed?!"

"Quietly." Garth ordered. "One at a time."

The men nodded, but the sound of foreign voices grew closer and the panic suddenly wracked their bones.

"I'll go first, then Gabriel, then Kevin, then Samandriel with Benny. Dean, you'll go last. Dean, are you listening?"

"Yes. I'm listening." Dean's mind resurfaced from the list of names that seemed to fill his mind whenever he was certain he was going to die. _Mother. Brother. Uncle. Father, if only he could forget the hurtful things he'd said._

"You're to go last." Garth explained.

Why last, Dean would never know. Perhaps it was the fact he appeared almost effortlessly able to hold his nerve in these situations, when in reality it was the list of names that subdued him into quiet acceptance of his sure fate.

"You should have plenty of time. But if not-"

"I'll be fine." he muttered. Deathly prospects didn't scare him anymore. He knew this war would kill him, it was only a matter of when and where. He was merely a walking ghost with a beating heart and a family he wished he could see one last time before that one inevitable carefully placed bullet. They all were, weren't they? Wasn't every man now a walking ghost?

"I'll go to the door; I'll have a clear view across the hall down to the church entrance there. I'll give a signal, and then the next man runs. Okay?"

The men nod, crouched by the wall, rifles clutched to their chests.

Garth makes the run. The coast is clear. Gabriel goes. The coast is clear. Kevin goes. Benny mistakes the sudden movement of Garth's hand as a sign for the all clear, makes a run for it, leaving Samandriel behind. Garth scalds him in silent, frantic movements in the moonlight that seemed almost futile in the few short moments that followed like a series of pictures in one of the flip books Dean used to make with his mother as a child; a series of single images, rapidly configuring into a short moving picture in an illusion of the light. Only, this wasn’t an illusion. Not this time.

German voices. Samandriel panics, runs out of turn. Gabriel shouts something indecipherable, and then the room appears to implode and the ceiling comes crashing down with a sound like thunder, amidst it a scream Dean will never be able to tear from his memory. 

From the darkness Dean found the will to move. The room span as his eyes opened, blinking through the dust as the piercing buzz buried itself at the core of his brain. From a distance he couldn’t quite estimate, laugher appeared to break the silence; It seemed far enough to tell him that he's in no immediate danger – but danger was always rapidly gaining on him out in this country he had found, and it was these moments that always seemed to lull him into complacence.

He sat, looked round at the desolation surrounding him. The ceiling had caved partially - a grenade attack most likely, meaning the perpetrator must still be close by... 

Frantically he scrambled to his knees, looking round for any sign of imminent opposition. Why, he asked himself, was he so afraid of the enemy when he had already accepted his fate? 

Instead of a Nazi uniform, his eyes laid upon an American one instead, lying haphazardly beneath the rubble of the collapsed roof, unmoving.

Samandriel.

Dean's heart lurched. He wanted to desperately to pull him from the rocks, shake his body until his heart beat again. He knew it would be futile, so instead he simply reached for his only exposed hand, and held it tightly, feeling his body heat drain away into the motionless French night. Twenty-two he'd claimed to be, but Dean had suspected the lie from the moment he laid eyes upon him; he couldn't have been any older than Dean's younger brother Sam who, at merely 16 years old, remained nervously back home beside the family radio in Lawrence, Kansas, waiting with dread for the announcement of another fallen solider - Private Dean Winchester.

How was it fair that Samandriel had died in his place?

He was going to be sick.

He hauled his self away from the body and grabbed the fallen boy’s bag. He needed to get out of there and soon; although the laughter remained at a safe distance, he knew it wouldn't last.

But as he pulled Samandriel's pack from the rubble and emptied its contents - mostly letters from his mother, chocolate still wrapped in foil, things Dean could mail to the poor boy's widowed mother - he noticed a pair of ice blue eyes watching him fearfully from across the wrecked church hall. Immediately Dean threw the bag down and scrambled for his gun, but the pair of eyes widened suddenly and the body they belonged to tripped into a corner with his arms raised in surrender. 

Dean frowned, and edged closer with his gun raised steadily. He noted the boy's face first of all; wide eyes, pale skin, cheeks hollowed with malnourishment and terror. He was small, young, perhaps the same age as Dean at a push. He didn't have the aura of that of a solider, more like that of a startled lamb. And then Dean noticed his uniform, the red band around his arm and that treacherous symbol that had been hijacked by an even more treacherous man.

"Don't kill me." The boy muttered. "Please."

His English was good; his accented words told Dean he was a well educated kid thrust into the midst of this mess. "They made me come in here. To check the Americans are dead. Please, do not kill me."

Dean eyed him warily; he could be carrying an explosive, he could have his finger lingering over a trigger, ready to take himself out with it if it meant he could destroy Dean too.

"Hands up." Dean growled, gun still raised.

The boy did so. Dean noticed his cheeks wet with tears.

"Please do not kill me."

"Who are you? What is your name?"

"Castiel Novak. From Berlin."

"Not cut out to be a solider, huh, Castiel? Come on, stand, face me like a man. It will make it easier for me to kill you."

The boy let out a terrified sob and cowered further into the corner. Dean signed, dropped his gun, knelt down before him and right into those eerie blue eyes.

"Why become a soldier if yore not willing to fight?"

"I had no choice. None of us did. And then there’s my father."

Dean almost laughed. "Dads are cunts, I get you there."

The boy frowned.

"Why didn't you tell him no? Your father, I mean. Why didn't you just refuse to serve?"

"He will kill me."

"You could have just run away."

"The army will just kill me instead."

Dean reached out, took the helmet from Castiel's head to reveal a head of charcoal hair. The boy quivered beneath his touch.

"My name is Dean. Dean Winchester, from Kansas."

"America?"

Dean nodded.

 "I have always wished to go. As s child it was my dream. But I cannot go if you kill me. If you leave, Dean, I will say you escaped me. I will not hurt you. I will tell them you do not have what we are looking for. I will tell them any lie you wish."

Dean felt his stomach drop; this wasn't a random attack - they were being pursued. Perhaps Castiel was a spy, a distraction to allow Dean to drop his guard whilst the rest of Castiel's company surrounded the building. He raised his gun, finger teasing the trigger again.

Castiel let out a sob so loud it almost startled him to fire, if not for the small delicate hand that reached out for him, resting on his knee involuntarily in fear.

"Burn it now for all I care. The book, if you have it. Burn it. I will bring them the ashes and tell them you used it as fuel for your fire."

The book tucked inside Dean's jacket suddenly weighed a tonne.

"I do not know what it contains. I do not want to know. But if you destroy it and hand me the proof it is gone, my people will stop following you. Please."

Dean contemplated this. The costs were too high.

"I cannot destroy it. It is too valuable."

"Then just run. Go. Go away, far from here, before my men are able to track you again."

Dean nodded.

The shouts of German from afar grew nearer.

"Quick. You do not have much time."

Dean reassured himself the book was tucked against his breast, and stood. "Make it to the end of this war, and I will show you America. Deal?"

The small soldier nodded. "Deal."

Dean turned around, lingered long enough to hear the gentle sob of, " _Danke sehr, Dean Winchester_."

 _Vinchester_. Dean Smiled. Dean _Vinchester_ , was how he had said it. He would live to hear this young boy pronounce his name like this again – he was determined of it. And for the first time since he was drafted, he had a purpose now, a reason to fight on, to see the end of the war, to bring Castiel to America.

Dean sprinted from the derelict church and into the forest; " _Bitte sehr, Castiel Novak._ Dean muttered to himself, not daring to raise his voice over a whisper into the threatening darkness that impounded him. It was the moment he acknowledged the quiet of his voice that the silence of the world around him began to roar in his ears. It was in this moment that he realised his company was gone, and he was stranded in the middle of a forest teasing the boarder of a Northern French town on the cusp of German occupation with no American soldiers left to prevent it, with no map, little water, and the very object inside his jacket that could very well win the war if only he could deliver it to the US Army base intact. And he was all alone.

_Mother, brother, uncle, father._

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for any grammatical mistakes my head has been all over the place. but yay, I've officially left school!! I'll try and finish this fic before i start uni in september. <3

His breathing was short, sharp, emitting silver clouds into the unnervingly still night.

 _Dean, you'll go last._ It all made sense now. _Go last, so that if you get caught, the rest of us won't have a reason to be pursued. Go last, so if they catch you, the rest of us can run free and lose the trail of enemies that have been following us relentlessly across northern France for the past four days._ That’s what Garth had meant, hadn’t it? 

They didn't care for the contents of that book - they hadn't valued the secrets it held like the generals back at the base did. They only knew that as long as Dean had it, he was a liability, and the rest of the group was hanging on the cliff edge with the eyes of a group of Nazi soldier’s training in on them.

The sooner they shed the weight of him, the longer they would live. Dean hated himself for agreeing to be the one to carry it, to feel it resting over the space on his chest where his heart strains and splutters at every snapping twig in the night, tucked there so safely in his pocket. Had this been their plan all along? To lose him? To send him out alone in the night without a torch or map or compass, stranded in a country where he could barely speak the language?

He wanted to scream out, thud the nearest tree with his fist and curse their names. Didn't they care he had a family to return to? A mother, brother, uncle, father if he could forget the hurtful things he'd said, Jo, her brother Ash, her mother Ellen -  _breathe_. 

He collapsed at the foot of a tree, panic constricting his lungs. He swore he could hear footfalls close by. Or was that the sound of rushing blood in his ears? He couldn't tell. 

Part of him hoped to see Garth and the others spill out from behind a tree, gape at the loss of Samandriel and ask him why on earth a Nazi soldier would let him go free. But the longer he hoped, the absence of any sound told him they were perhaps half way back to the base by now. Or maybe they'd been ambushed in their escape, earning them each a shot between the eyes. And in some crude way, Dean couldn't decide which image he preferred best.

 _There's no hope in navigating to safety in the pitch black night._  Dean told himself.  _No hope at all._

He searched his surroundings for a climbable tree of which he could perch in the braches until the morning came, but there was nothing he could easily scale without attracting attention. The only source of shelter he could see in the darkness was a thick mass of nettles and leaves that looked like the sort of place he’d attempt to build a den within with his friends. It would have to do. 

So he crawled into a mass of bushes, hoping he wouldn't disturb the den of a foxes or badgers or wolves, or whatever other monsters roamed the nights in these treacherous times.  He heaped a pile of leaves over the curl of his body as he huddled beneath the thick foliage, hoping when the morning came it would still serve as a satisfactory shelter from keen eyes. And suddenly he didn't care for the creatures he could possibly disturb, because the fatigue suddenly fell upon him like an artillery shell and he was sent cascading into an unusually sound sleep.

That night he dreamed of Jo, sat by her windowsill watching the moon and the stars, wondering if in some faraway land Dean would be seeing them too. But suddenly the moon was a search light chained to the hands of an enemy solider stood within a watch tower, seeking traitors, deserters, infiltrators, anyone who didn't fit their agenda. 

The moon scanned the earth, relentless. Jo hadn't spotted it. She simply sat there unaware of its absence in the sky. Dean was stood below her now, wanting to scream out but not wanting to attract the search light's attention to himself. But the costs were too high - he couldn't lose Jo, and if it meant him dying in her place, he'd take that any day. 

"Jo! Baby, get down!" he yelled, but the face that looked down at him wasn't the face of his girlfriend anymore, and neither was she wearing the pale blue dress of hers she always seemed to wear in his dreams. Instead looking down at him was Castiel, the band around his arm almost constricting him.  

The solider frowned; he couldn't understand. 

Dean tried again, told him of his imminent danger, but any semblance of Castiel's English had escaped him, and the sound of machine gun fire rang out through the air around him the moment the moon let it's light linger upon the ashen faced boy. 

Castiel fell from the window, landing with a horrendous thud on the floor below. Dean rushed to his aid, pulled him into his back in search for any trace of life. But the face that looked back at him now was Sam - Dean's sixteen-year-old brother, with blood spilling from his mouth and ears, eyes open in an agonised stare.  

He threw the body back; Sam’s blood was on his hands, drying into the cracks of his nails and the patterns in his skin. How would his parents ever forgive him for this? His father would never look at him again, and the shock of losing her youngest son would surely throw his mother into a pit of despair he knew she was not strong enough to escape from anymore.

The sound of the machine guns surrounded him again, bullets cascading into the ground around him as he faltered for a moment with the fear of it.

And then he was awake, and the bullets seemed to have followed him into the reality he had found himself in. The heavy stench of damp leaves almost choked him as he held his breath, begging himself to stay silent as the bullets pelted the ground around him.

_Don’t move._

_They’re not shooting at you._

_Don’t move._

_They don’t know you’re here._

Something about the randomness of the fire was enough to comfort him; huddled within the thick leaves of the bush he had found himself in, he would have been impossible to spot.

_Think of home._

_Think of Sam._

_The shooting will stop soon._

_Hold your nerve._

Dean used the growing sound of the nearing shots to disguise the sound of the rustling leaves as he moved his head slightly, peering out at the bright but relentless morning he had found himself in. From a distance he could see bodies; Nazi uniforms, there were three of them at least, marching closer with machine guns held close to their chests.

“Wo ist der Junge?” The older of the three barked.

The soldiers that accompanied him stuttered briefly, unwilling to give a response to whatever question the older solider had demanded of them.

“Gib mir eine Antwort!”

They looked sheepish, embarrassed almost.

“Er rannte davon.” The shorter of the two said; Dean only wished he could understand them. It was this moment that made Dean regret skipping every Languages class to smoke behind the bleachers with a pair of senior boys when he was in tenth grade – he would be sure to pass on this little piece of wisdom to Sammy when he returned home, he told himself. He would convince Sammy to study hard, make sure he was never in this position himself. Dean would be damned if he ever let that happen.

“ _Was_?”

“…Er rannte davon, Kommandant.” The shorter man said again.

“Scheiße!” The older man spat. “ _Scheiße! Scheiße! Scheiße_!”

Machine gun fire rang out in the air around him again, and Dean cowered further under his covering of leaves, not daring to watch the scene unfold before him any longer.

“Finde ihn.” The older man hissed, and then the sound of heavy boots on the damp ground escaped him, and he was left with fading incoherent murmurs and a loud silence that had suddenly grown to mean safety, rather than the vulnerability he had learnt to associate with it.

He let himself breathe for a moment, feeling his mouth suddenly dry. He reached for his canteen at his belt only to find nothing in it’s place, and a sudden desperation fell over him. “ _Shit_.”

In that moment a twig snapped somewhere close by, and Dean recoiled back further into his leaves; the warm spot upon the ground he had been curled up upon suddenly felt like a comfort to him. Yet he still felt balanced precariously on a wire, waiting for the slightest breeze to send him tumbling to his death. 

He dared to peer out through the twigs around him for just a moment, praying he would not be met by the barrel of a gun.

Nothing.

It was the absence of anything that drove Dean’s anxiety into the sky; his fingers trembled as he clutched his gun tighter, praying he would see a rabbit or a hedgehog in the leaves that would serve as a satisfactory source of the sounds of the movements close by.

He imagined himself as a spec in the crosshair of a sniper training in on him; he could see in his mind the view of an enemy soldier, watching Dean with a sick smirk, waiting for his fears to dull for just a second so the complacence would set in and he could send that bullet through Dean’s skull in the moment he least expected it.

He had to snap himself out it; negative thoughts would only cost him time, and time was something he was quickly running out of. Besides, he couldn’t stay there forever, sitting beneath a bush. The air was beginning to grow heavy with rain and if he didn’t move soon, the thirst would become unbearable before the deathly hunger began to set in. Either test fate or die starving – those where his options. And he wasn’t going to let himself sit alone and waste away like a coward until he eventually died of starvation; he was not going to die the pathetic mess he had always believed himself to be. 

With a deep breath, he braced himself and climbed from beneath the bush, one hand clutching his rifle to his chest. He kept low as he crawled over to the closest tree, hoping his heavy heartbeat was quieter than the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. At the base of the tree he allowed himself a moment to collect his breathing, to scape out his surroundings and decide on a direction to run.

With no map, no compass, any direction was better than nothing; it was simply a case of choosing a direction and sticking to it, hoping he would come across a river or a miraculous supply of food discarded carelessly beneath the undergrowth.

Straight ahead, he decided. It was the opposite direction he had seen those Nazi soldiers appear from earlier, and hopefully the direction of the abandoned church where he’d encountered Castiel just hours before. Hopefully Samandriel’s bag would remain there – he hadn’t had enough time to empty it completely, and he knew Samandriel always kept a compass, and a spare one just in case. Possibly even a full canteen of water…or was that simply too hopeful?

He pulled himself to stand; his legs were already weakened with dehydration. He placed his finger over the trigger and began to walk, keeping a keen eye out for any movement that could serve as his only warning. 

_One step._

_Two steps._

_Three steps._

_Four steps._

A twig snapped behind him, and he spun quickly on his heel with his rifle raised. But there was nothing, and he struggled to contain his heart beat this time, feeling himself begin to descend into a panic of anxiety and paranoia and hopelessness that clutched at his throat. 

 _Mother, bother, father, if only he could forget the hurtful things he’d said._ In fact, Dean didn’t even care for his father’s insults anymore, he just wanted to see his face again because that face – no matter how harshly it may speak – would mean he was far, far away from the war.

He had to distract himself.

_Don’t cry. Calm yourself. Bring yourself back into the moment. What is the date? It’s May 5 th. Where were you on this day exactly a year ago? Sitting at an outdoor movie theatre in Lawrence with Jo, Ash, Sammy and Gadreel. It was sunny, and Gadreel spent his last dollar on a tub of popcorn for me because I was broke and Sammy had made me pay for his ticket. The knowledge of the looming war in Europe was on all of our minds, knowing it wouldn’t be too long before it was our turn to go. Who knows where Gadreel and Ash even are now; are they even alive?_

_And where would you like to be on this day in exactly a year from now? Anywhere but here, preferably alive, preferably with the war won and finished._

“Well you won’t win the war by crying about it.” Dean muttered to himself as he began to walk once again. Only this time he felt something on his shoulder, and he spun round quickly, planting the butt of his rifle right in the face of his assailant. 

He twisted his gun around in one quick movement, finger over the trigger, as he looked down at the body at his feet lying face down with his helmet discarded a metre away, unmoving. Nazi uniform; he should have guessed. But…his gun was still strapped to his back – he wasn’t about to attack. And that charcoal hair looked all too familiar.

Dean nudged the body warily with his foot.

The body stirred slightly, and Dean watched as the young boy stifled a groan as he rolled onto his back. It was Castiel lying there, looking up at him with a bloodied face and panic stricken eyes, hair plastered to his face with blood and sweat.

“Dean _Vinchester_? I knew it was you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos if you liked it and any comments are always appreciated (good or bad, comment any feedback) <3 <3


	3. Chapter 3

“What are you doing here?” Dean’s rifle was raised now, moving in line with Castiel’s head as he pulled himself to his knees. “Were you following me?”

Castiel’s face was too badly bloodied to have been the result of the single blow to his face.  Dean had not been the only person to have attacked him, that was clear to see. “No. I wasn’t. I just saw you, and – ”

“Nobody _just sees_ an enemy solider in the middle of a forest in northern France and decides to approach them for a chat.”

Voices suddenly approached from close by and Castiel suddenly grabbed Dean by the wrist, pulling him down to the base of the tree. The charcoal-haired solider gestured at Dean to be quiet, and Dean frowned over at him in reluctant compliance.

The sound of five, six pairs of feet pounded the earth not too far from them, and Dean knew from their shouts in a language he couldn’t quite decipher that to be seen by them would mean death. Castiel peered round the trunk of the tree to be sure they were in the clear, and climbed to his feet, pulling Dean with him.

“We need to get out of here.” Castiel hissed.

“What? Why should I go anywhere with you?” Dean spat. “Every instinct of mine is telling me to put a bullet through your skull.”

Castiel looked up at him with wide eyes. “I’m not here to kill you.”

“No offence, man, but I have the one object the Nazi generals want more than anything. I have the one book that could mean the end to this war, and you know that.”

“You think I care for that book? I told you to burn it. Now, both of our lives are in danger if we stay. There is a Nazi base camp not too far from here – they will find us. We must go. Now. You’ll only survive if you’re with me – I know these woods.”

Castiel went to move, but Dean stopped him. “What have you done? Why are you so afraid of your own men?”

“Well…” He stopped, looked at Dean with a slight press at his brow. “I did what you said, didn’t I? I ran.”

Dean eyed him suspiciously; this could all so easily be a trap. It all seemed too coincidental; bumping into a pathetic Nazi soldier who would not kill him and spoke near-perfect English who then proceeded to let him run free was one thing, but then bumping into him again in the middle of a forest whilst he claims to have deserted was another. It didn’t make sense. This could be part of an elaborate plan to capture him, take the book, torture him for further army secrets; perhaps Castiel was instructed to form a bond of trust with Dean, only to lure him into a trap in which he would put the whole of the American army in danger…the risks where too high. Dean raised his gun.

Castiel froze.

“I’m sorry, kid. But I’m not going anywhere with you. This alliance ends here.”

The tremor returned to Castiel’s lip but it seemed that whatever fate he’d met to gain such a bloodied face had hardened him somewhat, because he didn’t cry this time. “My name is Castiel Novak. I was born in Bonn but I moved to Berlin when I was fifteen, to attend a boarding school for gifted boys. My older brother Lucifer already attended. He was smarter than me. My sister, Anna, is still at home. She is scared. I am scared too – we all are. My mother has barely seen my father since the war began. I do not believe she has remained in Berlin where my father can find her. She is probably seeking refuge in Hamburg right now, but I do not know. I cannot return to her – she gave no address. My brother wants me dead for desertion, my dad father will want me dead too. Please, do not give them the satisfaction.”

“Why did you desert?”

“Wouldn’t you, if you’d seen the things we both had, but felt no connection to the cause? You may be able to stomach handing over an innocent family to be executed if you believed it was right. But I do not believe it to be right at all. If I had stayed, it would not have been the war that killed me. I’d have had no trouble doing it myself.”

“ _HALT_!” The voice came from far-off.

Heavy fire filled the air, and Dean’s first instinct was to knock Castiel to safety on the ground.

He shot once – their assailant was silenced with a gasp as he fell to the ground.

“We need to go. Before the others come.”

Dean nodded, gesturing towards the opposite direction. Castiel followed suit as sounds of shouts began to fill the air from close behind.

***

They clambered through the undergrowth, keeping low with their finger’s hovering over the triggers of their guns. Dean took direction from Castiel – he claimed to know the forest fairly well - praying that he wouldn’t lead them directly back to the Nazi base. All the while they walked, the barrel of Dean’s gun remained in the perfect position to place a bullet through Castiel’s head if need-be. Perhaps he’d even have time to shot another through his back just for good measure…

It was beginning to get dark; Dean wasn’t sure how long they had been walking but it felt like days, weeks…every corner they turned their surroundings were the same: trees, mud, overgrown foliage. The thirst was beginning to gnaw at his skull and he was sure that if he didn’t eat soon his legs would topple out from underneath him.

“Hey, kid.” Dean hissed at the boy in front of him.

Castiel didn’t react.

Dean picked a twig up from the ground and threw it gently at the back his head. The German boy turned round slowly, a distinct role of his eye as he looked at Dean. “ _What_?”

“Do you have any water? _Wasser_. You know – anything to drink?”

“I can understand English.” Castiel huffed. “And no. We are going in the direction of a farm. There will be food. There is a river there too. Fresh water.”

“How far?”

“Only a mile now.”

“How do you know it’s there? Won’t there be people living there still? We can’t just barge in demand food.”

Castiel stopped, looked round at Dean. “Remember how I said about forcing a family from their home for execution?”

Dean stopped too. “Oh.”

Castiel continued to walk, and Dean regretted opening his mouth. “A mother, a father, two young girls, and a dog. They had done nothing wrong. The father just didn’t appreciate fifty Nazi soldiers wading through his crops, or his horses being taken with no price paid in return. They are all dead now. It was my job to load the gun - punishment from my brother for letting you go free back at the church.”

***

They emerged through a break in the trees merely half an hour later, to be confronted with a small pine-wood cabin in the middle of the clearing. To one side was a barn with it’s door broken down, hay strewn out across the grass. There was an empty pig pen too, and Dean could smell the coppery stench of fresh blood; he didn’t dare ask or glance at the direction it was coming from.

Castiel broke into a desperate run across the compound, and dropped to his knees on the other side just before the row of trees that gave away to the surrounding forest. Dean followed suit, feeling his heart shudder at the sight of actual fresh running water running before the tips of his boots. He scooped the liquid up with his hands and drank from his palms, ravenous to fill his body until he couldn’t possibly drink anymore. When he stopped, he looked up at Castiel who was washing the blood from his face almost delicately, wincing at the sting of the water cleansing his wounds, new and old.

“Sorry about, you know, hitting you in the face with my gun.” Dean said, relaxing back onto his calves as he rolled up his damp sleeves, panting slightly with exasperation.

Castiel looked up in acknowledgement, but he didn’t say anything, just shuddered as he probed the bruising area around his nose where he’d taken Dean’s blow. His fingers were pale and gentle, shaking with the pain of it.

“Probably shouldn’t have snuck up on me like that, though.” Dean laughed.

“It’s fine.” The German boy said. “I’ve suffered worse these past twenty-four hours.”

Dean looked up at his face and saw, for the first time now that the blood and dirt had been washed from his skin, a large gash protruding out from under his hair line, and a deep cut upon his cheekbone that was beginning to turn blue at the edges. “What happened?”

Castiel simply shrugged and pulled himself to his feet. “Doesn’t matter. It’s getting dark. We should sleep. The soldiers might come back to the house to search it again so the barn is the safest place to sleep.”

“Okay.” Dean said. “But what about food? I’m starving and –”

Castiel slung his bag from one shoulder, reached inside and revealed a small bread roll wrapped in cloth. He tossed it to Dean, and made his way towards the barn.

“You had food with you all this time?!”

Castiel ignored him.

Dean tore off an end and began to eat away at it as he followed. “Do you want any?”

“Not hungry.”

“You must be, we’ve been walking for hours and –”

“I’m not hungry, Dean.”

 

Then entered the desolate barn and Castiel pointed over at a tall ladder leaning up to a makeshift floor on the rafters where bales upon bales of hay remained neatly stacked, never to be used.

“We’ll be safer up there.”

Dean followed him up the ladder, half the bread roll stashed neatly inside his jacket beside the book he still held on to with his life.

It was warmer up there in the rafters, and through a hole in the roofing the moonlight washed the space in a comforting silver. Castiel dumped his bag and kicked off his shoes, then dug into his bag to retrieve another pair of socks. Dean watched him swap his socks with bored intrigue, wondering a million and one things about the boy sat before him. _What was he feeling? Was he scared? Did he have a plan? Was he really who he said he was?_

“How old are you?”

Castiel met his gaze briefly, but returned his attention quickly to the task in hand in a way that only furthered Dean’s curiosity. “Nineteen.”

“How old are you _really_?” Dean pressed.

Castiel faltered a moment. “Seventeen.”

“They let you fight at your age?”

“Not exactly. I had to get out of that school. It was horrific; like a factory for making the perfect Nazi soldier. I snuck into the office one night, changed my date of birth so I’d be sent to fight sooner.”

“You’d rather fight than be stuck at school? No offence, kid, but-”

“You don’t understand what it was like. They made us beat the weaker ones, humiliated the ones who couldn’t stand it. They treated us like dirt, forced us to become so cold that it did not even register that there was a belt in our hands and it was our best friends we were beating. They wanted us to become emotionless robots.” He took a breath. “I watched my best friend get beat into such a state he will never walk, never talk again. He sits at home by the window watching the world go by and he cannot participate in it any longer. His crime? He came last in a race, and the coach was too distracted to realise his strongest pupils had gone too far in their punishment for once.”

“I’m sorry.”

“ _Sorry_? What can _sorry_ do now?” Castiel laughed. “When I got drafted to fight, I ended up in my brother’s regiment out of all places. He was furious with me, for changing my date of birth. He marched me to his office, sat me down, and called father. I knew I would not be accepted back to the school if I was to return and I believed for a moment I’d only be sent back to mother. But my father? He laughed, told me he was proud of me, so willing to fight for what was right. And that was all.”

“I can’t say I understand what that’s like, but I don’t blame you for wanting to run.” Dean said.

“Don’t you want to run too?”

“I have a duty to fulfil before I can even consider calling it quits.” Dean said. “I want to make my brother proud. I want to make my country proud.”

Castiel let out a short laugh. “What is it about America that makes Americans so desperate to prove themselves?”

Dean shrugged. “Just the way we’re taught to be, I guess.”

“You always have a choice though.” Castiel said harshly. “We don’t have to be everything we’re told we have to be.”

Dean stared down at his hands, glanced over at Castiel’s trembling fingers resting on his knees.

“I just need to get out alive.” Castiel said. “I just want to wake up one day and not be scared for the future. I can’t even remember what it’s like to feel safe.”

“You and me both, kid.” Dean smiled. “We’ll survive this, okay? You’ll wake up one day feeling safe – I’ll make sure of it. Gotta get you to America when it’s all over, right?”

Dean wasn’t sure if he expected Castiel to smile. In fact, he wasn’t sure how he expected Castiel to react at all. But the young solider simply sighed and slipped out of his jacket, pulling it over himself and settling down into the hay. “It will be safer if one of us keeps watch. Wake me up in a few hours. We’ll take shifts. Tomorrow we shall get far from here.”

“Okay…” Dean said, almost hating himself for letting the conversation die so suddenly, “Gute noches.”

“Gute _Nacht_.” Castiel hissed. “Stick to English. Please.”

And then the night fell silent, and Dean was left with a conversation half finished and the cold presence of a boy who pretended to sleep just a metre away in the hay.

***

A soft pattering caught Dean off guard - a sound not unlike enemy footsteps that sent a shudder through his bones. He glanced over at Castiel, noticed the water dripping through the hole in the roof onto the sleeping boy below. He slipped from his jacket poked it up through the hole and flattened it across the roof; it would not hold the water forever, but at least it gave Castiel time to sleep until it was his turn to keep watch.

***

Dean wasn't sure when exactly he's fallen asleep, but when he woke Castiel was sitting calmly with his legs hanging over the balcony, fiddling with a fraying thread at his sleeve.

Dean watched him for a moment; he looked sad this morning. Distracted. Hopeless. Perhaps it was the mood the inclement weather had delivered, but Dean sensed it was something deeper. Castiel glanced over his shoulder at Dean, and looked away so quickly that Dean hadn't had the time to offer even a smile.

"Morning." Dean said, sitting up in the hay.

"Morning. Yes. We must leave soon."

And they were on their way out of the barn before Dean had even had the chance to rub the sleep from his eyes.

With his damp jacket hung limply across his shoulders, Dean followed Castiel across the farm yard and into the small Cabin that remained unoccupied. He stood guard while Castiel emptied what discarded cans of food remained left behind by the soldiers that has raised the cupboards before executing the house's occupants into his bag, and they were on their way again.

Castiel barely spoke to Dean as they walked, and at times Dean felt as though he was following him aimlessly. He could have sworn they were walking in circles; every tree, every fallen log looked the same as the one previous, but he was too tired to raise question to it. Castiel was his only means of survival now; even if he merely claimed to know the woods, he was a damn sight more useful than Dean would be alone. He had a map, and a vague sense of direction - and perhaps Dean was beginning to buy his professed desire to just get away.

But there was one more thing about Castiel - one other thing that has Dean stepping close to his heel, desperate not to loose sight of him. And that was since they had been waking together, Dean had barely had a chance to allow the anxiety to take over, to force him to recite that list of names that always seemed to calm his nerves. How had it gone again? _Mother, brother, father, uncle, Jo, Ellen, Ash._ They all seemed so distant now; so unreachable.

***

 "You do know," Dean started as they sat beside another flowing river. He was beginning to suspect that Castiel had been following the flow of the water all along; it's faint trickle never seemed to be out of earshot, and he had been beginning to believe he was imagining it. It was a well known fact that to follow a river would lead you directly to civilisation - maybe there really was method to his madness after all, "that I'm not running away too, don't you?"

Castiel looked up at him, looked away before their eyes had a chance to meet.

"Once we reach the village we're headed for, I'll radio out to my men and they will come back for me."

Castiel watched Dean's hands as he dug at the mud with a stick. His brow creased a little; Dean was watching the thoughts pass through his head, his eyelids fluttering as they went. _What are you thinking?_ Dean wanted to ask. _Do you want me to stay? Do you really have no where to go?_ _What is going on in your head?_

"They're not your men." He said quickly after a moment’s pause, pulling himself to his feet again. "You belong to them. You're a weapon. Don't let yourself forget that, no matter how much they want you to."

***

The sky began to darken quicker than Dean had been expecting; it seemed that every hour had blurred into one until the passing of time was just a fact. But now the anxiety that crept through the air as the darkness began to envelope the forest was a reminder that no day could last forever – danger would always find them eventually.

They were close, Castiel had promised. But Castiel had promised that almost a thousand times now and Dean was beginning to suspect they really had been walking in circles. It wouldn’t be too long before they came across that wrecked church in which they’d first met, with it’s shattered artillery shells that had exploded a confetti of stained glass across the pews; that backdrop to the precise moment Dean’s life was turned on it’s head; where Samandriel’s body probably still remained – their company would have been too cowardly to dare return for it. How will his mother feel when she learns that; when she learns her son’s life was taken for nothing, and the ones who had gotten him into that mess didn’t care enough to honour his sacrifice as he deserved? Deep down Dean regretted that it hadn’t been him to die so needlessly – it would bring an end to this, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t be scared anymore; his life wouldn’t feel as if it had already ended the moment he agreed to carry that wretched book. 

They scaled a tree. It wasn’t tall but it’s leaves were thick and it would at least serve as some sort of protection until the morning light returned. They perched on a thick branch, Dean’s back up against the trunk, a leg either side as Castiel balanced between them. The german boy was shivering now; who knows how long it had been since he’d last eaten? His energy was faltering and the electricity was fading from the blue of his eyes like a machine whose wires were slowly wearing away. 

“What was your sister like?” Dean asked in a whisper; he was afraid his words would get carried away by the wind and Castiel would not hear, but the boy’s head was resting on his chest beneath his chin for warmth so he knew his worries were only a manifestation of something else.

“She was so innocent, so naïve to it all.” Castiel said. “She didn’t deserve to be caught up in all of this.”

“None of us did.” Dean said. “How old is she?”

“She was only nine. Who knows if she’s even alive now? There are bombs in the cities; I’ve heard it on the radios. I am glad she is not in Berlin anymore. It was my fault she had to move there – my fault I had to go to that stupid school.”

“You didn’t have a choice.”

“I did. I could have stolen one of father’s guns and put a bullet through my brain the moment he told me the train was waiting.”

“Don’t say that, kid.”

“If I find out she has been killed that is what-”

“Stop.” Dean said through gritted teeth. “ _Don’t_.”

Castiel tried to move away from Dean, to look up at his face maybe, but his body was too weak. He swore he could feel his muscles wasting away in his arms; his stomach eating itself from the inside out. “What do I do now, Dean? What can I even do to survive?”

Dean didn’t have an answer for that – there were walls coming down tonight that even an artillery shell couldn’t shatter. Castiel let out a deep breath; a sigh. Dean had known what it was like to feel that way, to have heavy lungs and a heavy heart and limbs that just wouldn’t move as you wanted them to. That feeling of being so hopeless, so lost, stranded, was one that reminded him of a time long passed – a time where he would have killed a man to have been able to have had the weight lifted from his chest for just a moment. But this was different. This was a weight that hung over the hearts of every man and woman on this earth, waiting for the eventual light that would fall upon the world again, if only it ever dared to come.

“You’ve got ammo for your gun, right?”

Castiel could barely move his head to nod.

“Tomorrow we shall find that church again.” Dean decided.


	4. Chapter 4

“Peaches.” It was more of a statement than an offering as Dean pulled the lid away and handed the tin to Castiel.

He sensed the refusal on his face, but shifted along the branch before he could raise even a semblance of an argument. Castiel accepted them dully and popped one into his mouth, chewing with something close to dejection.

“You’ll need strength for today. We’re heading back to that church and it’s more than likely to be occupied. I don’t need you passing out in the middle of it all.”

“Danke.” Castiel said quietly.

Dean looked back at him briefly, saw him chew and swallow. It seemed the colour was already beginning to return to his cheeks, and for that Dean was glad.

It wasn’t long before they were on they way again, climbing through the forests and dodging the ever-nearing voices of the enemy. They would sulk behind trees, crawl through the fallen leaves, perch behind bushes with their guns raised, ready to shoot.

“Remind me why we are going back to the church.” Castiel hissed as a pair of enemy soldiers passed the mass of shrubbery they were huddled behind.

“The church is at the edge of the village. There are roads to follow and telephones to call for rescue.”

“And people who will kill us the moment they see us.” Castiel spat.

The guards were out of sight, and the pair made a break for it, running as silently as they could through the forest.

It didn’t take them long before they passed the mass of leaves of which Dean recognised as the bush in which he’d spent a very long and uncomfortable night. The church was close, and the sound of gun fire – practice shots - told them that they would not be alone when they reached it.

 ***

Peering through the space where an elegantly coloured window had once stood, Dean assessed the situation: three solders stationed inside, each picking through piles of confiscated belongings; books, reels of film, exotic cigarettes, various cassette tapes and hand-held radios. The rubble had been cleared from the space, the pews pushed back, shattered glass swept into a corner.

Dean raised his gun.

“Wait.” Castiel propped himself up onto his tiptoes, stole a glance at the men inside. He turned back to Dean. “Kill them.”

“Looking for someone in particular?”

“My brother.” Castiel said. “He will be in the village somewhere, but he isn’t in there. We’ll find him I’m sure. But let me kill him myself when we do.”

Dean stifled a frown as he raised his gun again, taking steady aim at the closest solider who seemed to have found a raunchy porn magazine and was grinning to himself as he flicked through the pages.

“Filthy son-of-a-bitch.” Dean muttered as he pulled the trigger. The sound echoed around the space, and the solider dropped to the floor – a single shot to the head. The two remaining soldiers scrambled for their guns, spinning on their heels in an attempt to locate their attacker. But Dean and Castiel were safely positioned behind the church wall now, hoping their breathing wasn’t loud enough to be heard.

Dean gestured to the back door, and the two of them crept round the side of the church. Dean raised his gun, took aim, sent a single shot through the skull of the second solider, and almost instantly after, another through the skull of the third.

“Quick.” Dean hissed. “We need to get in and out of there before anybody else turns up.”

Castiel followed Dean inside and kept watch by the church door; here he had a view of the steep long road that lead into the centre of the village – the same road he’d been forced to walk many a time back under his brother’s control. Only now he didn’t feel the expectation burrowing into the back of his head like he always had done, didn’t feel the humiliation of never living up to his family name. He knew he would die soon – there was no way he would make it far – but he’d take death over feeling that way again, and gladly.

“Why are we here?” Castiel asked. He turned to see Dean pulling a pair of the Nazi’s trousers over his own. “What on earth are you _doing_?”

“I need to find a phone, make a call back to the base. You can’t expect me to walk into the village dressed as an American soldier, do you?” Dean said simply. “They’d shoot me on sight.”

Castiel held back a groan. “You can’t speak _any_ German. How do you expect to find a phone?”

“I’ll have you with me, you can do the talking.”

“I can’t go into the village with you.” Castiel said flatly.

“Well, why not? You know your way around this village – ”

“I can’t be seen.”

“Why not-”

“You have _no idea_ who I am, Dean.” Castiel hissed suddenly, which such venom that Dean looked up quickly from the buttons he was hastily fastening in shock. “Listen to me. Nobody in that village can see me.”

“Okay.” Dean said simply, sliding his pack across the floor until it stopped just a foot away from Castiel.

Castiel looked down at it, looked up at Dean with a frown pressing at his brow. He picked it up slowly and slung it over his shoulder, “There is a hotel in the village. Just the one. They have a telephone, but only because my brother does not know of it’s existence. The rest have had their wires cut. Tell the hotel manager Castiel sent you; he can speak English. But be quiet – do not let anyone hear you. Do not speak to anybody else, avoid confrontation. They will turn on you the moment they realise you are not German. Your German is appalling so please, Dean, keep your mouth shut. Do not say a word to anyone.”

“And where will you be?”

“Through the village is a road that runs north. I will wait in a tree two hundred paces from the town’s sign post. Come there when you have the location of your base and I will take you there – your soldiers will not come to you, you are a fool to think they would. Whistle three times and I will meet you, and I will take you wherever you need to go. Understand?”

Dean nodded, reached out and squeezed Castiel on the shoulder just once. The boy seemed so shrunken and small beneath his touch and Dean was sure he was still shivering too. “See you then, kid.”

Castiel turned towards the back exit, and Dean stepped out of the church’s large door towards the road that would lead him into the village. But Castiel’s voice pulled him back suddenly.

“If you get into trouble, shoot to kill.”

Dean stifled a smile and turned with a wink. “It’s what I’m best at, isn’t it?”

*** 

Dean found he was holding his breath as he marched down the village lane from the church to where he would find the centre of the village. He kept his head still, stepped almost uniformly, eyes forwards. Enemy soldiers passed him, and he gave them but a brief salute as he kept his teeth clenched tight. 

The centre of the village was busy with soldiers, locals immersed within it all so unwillingly. Men in their pristine uniforms patrolled the streets, keeping a hawk eye out for anything, anybody that stepped out of line. And for the first time since Dean could remember, he thought of his mother, brother, uncle, father… _Breathe_.

 _Hotel_. The painted sign was faded and peeling but it was clear enough. A soldier stood at the door, dead faced, on duty. Dean stepped forwards to pass by, but a hand extended out in front of him almost mechanically. Dean swallowed hard, almost reached for his gun on impulse, but in a moment’s relief saw a piece of paper in the hand offered towards him, a stack of identical prints neatly held under his arm.

“ _Für Sie. Lies es_.”

Dean took the paper, folded it once, hoping that whatever had been said hadn’t been a question. “Danke.”

The soldier seemed accepting of that response and stepped aside to let him through, and the smell of damp carpets and cheap plaster immersed under a light smoke that greeted him inside had never been so comforting.

He removed his hat, held it in his hands as he approached the front desk. To his left was a bar; a group of soldiers sat at it listening to the radio that played dimly in the background in a language that was neither English nor French, but neither sounded like the harsh military broadcasts he had often intercepted with radios of his own back at the US base.

“Football.” The old man behind the desk said suddenly, noticing Dean’s curiosity. “An old broadcast from before the war.”

Dean nodded. His English was good, and his accent told Dean that this was the French man, the hotel manager, that he was looking for. He leaned in, watching the old man closely. His glasses were cracked and the frames crooked, there was a yellow tint to his eyes. He stared back at Dean with a pale flush to his cheeks; not daring to move too much.

Dean leant in casually, forearms on the desk, eyes on the manager’s. “Castiel sent me.” He said in a whisper.

“You’re an American.” The manager almost gasped.

Dean shushed him, almost too loudly. When he glanced around the room to be sure his presence remained undetected, he caught the eye of one of the soldiers at the bar who raised his beer to him with a raise of his brows and a slight smile to his lips.

Dean flashed him a polite smile – unassuming and inconspicuous - and turned back the manager sat behind the desk.

“Where is the phone?”

“What are you doing in that uniform?”

“I need the phone. I know you have one. I’m a friend of Castiel. Well, not a friend per se…He told me you have one.”

The manager eyed him suspiciously, took a deep breath and unhooked a key from the wall as naturally as he could. “How can I trust you?”

Dean glanced around the room again, a quick flit of his eyes between each solitary man who smoked, each shared conversation between friends. “I was on a mission that went wrong. I had to retrieve a…had to retrieve something the Nazi generals want. And now I’m stuck in the middle of this shit and I need to get back to my men. Just help me, you son-of-a-bitch. The fate of this war, of every allied troop, relies on it.”

The manager nodded briefly, understanding but with some level of acquiesce that Dean understood only too well. “First floor. Room three. It is hidden in the trunk under the window – the wires run out a small hole in the back. Plug it in – it will work.” He handed the key to Dean, spoke louder now. “Enjoy your stay.”

“ _Danke_.” Dean spoke clearly now too.

“You’re most welcome.”

Dean turned from the room and caught the eye of the man at the bar again. He seemed to be smiling shyly, an invite perhaps, with a coyness that would have so easily won Dean over had he been back in the US, at one of those bars Gadreel always dragged him to on a Thursday night where men would buy other men drinks and girls danced freely with other girls.

Dean responded graciously with a tip of the hat as he placed it back to his head, and turned for the door.  Once he was through he almost ran up the stairs to the first floor, where he struggled to unlock the door with such a haste that his hands began to shake and the palpitations of anxiety strained his lungs.

Finally the door clicked open, and Dean stepped inside. 

He shut the door behind him, ensuring it was locked. And before he was even aware of his own actions, he had dropped to his knees, the phone was plugged into the wall, and he was holding it like a live grenade in his hands.

He pulled the book out from inside his jacket, ran his thumb across the pages, watching the barely-legible scribblings of pencil flutter before his eyes. _Life or death, this piece of paper will save you._ The general had said back at the base, handing a small slip of folded parchment to Dean. _Memorise the number, burn the paper when you’re done. Once you have the book – call it, and we will pluck you outta that hell hole quicker than you were thrown into it._

He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, let the oxygen clear his head. And then the numbers had been dialled, and the phone was held to his head like a loaded gun and the pressure within his skull suddenly surged with each ring.

A click.

A shuffle.

A distant voice.

“I have the book.” Dean said simply. No greeting. There wasn’t time for pleasantries.

“How many of you are left?” The voice that greeted him now was short, harsh. He didn’t recognise it, but he trusted it.

“Just me.”

“You’re alone?”

“Not exactly.”

“How so?”

“Long story. I’ve made alliance with another, his name is Castiel. He knows these parts. He will get me to you. Just give me co-ordinates of the base and I’ll be there.”

“It is a top-secret base, Dean. How can you be sure this Castiel won’t give our location to the enemy?”

“I’m sure, okay? I just need your location, I’m on a knife-edge, here.”

The voice accepted, read a series of numbers. Dean scrawled the list of numbers into the back of the book, and tucked it neatly back into his jacket.

“What is your current location? We need to know you won’t be too long – it could be any moment we are infiltrated by the enemy once they catch wind of where we’re hiding. If you’re too long we might not be here when you arrive.”

“A village, northern France. We were close to the base when we got chased off course. I lost the map or I’d be there by now.”

“Look around you – is there anything that can tell you where you are? A sign post, a land mark?”

Dean propped himself onto his knees, peered over the window ledge into the street below, eyes scanning the landscape before him. A butchers, a bakery with hungry villagers queueing out the door for rations. No village name to be seen. He looked closer: a phone box propped up against the wall of a barbers, inside it was a man who held the receiver to his ear but his mouth did not move. To the right of the barbers was what appeared to be an apartment block. But to the right of that…a town hall. _Pierrefonds_ _town hall._

“Pierrefonds.” Dean said quickly. “I’m in a village called Pierrefonds.”

Dean watched in the street below a pair of frail young boys with dirtied knees kicking a football to one another, before a soldier with a young face joined in too.

A click.

A shuffle.

A distant laugh. The laugh of a young boy. Unfitting.

“Okay. Only a days’ travel. We will be waiting for you. Travel safely.”

Once the line clicked dead, Dean pulled the phone from the wall and propped himself back up onto his knees peering out of the window again. The phone box door opened quickly, and out stepped the soldier Dean had seen at the bar, the soldier that had raised his drink. And then he looked up at the window, and Dean met his eye once again. He tipped his hat, sent Dean a chilling smile, and then before he even had a chance to hide the phone again, he was sprinting down the length of the hotel towards the fire exit just as the sounds of heavy footfalls and shouts began to emerge from the floor below him.

The call had been intercepted. How naive had he been to have been so trusting?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit guyssss sorry I started uni and I've been busy with freshers week and it's fcking crraaaazzyy i don't even know what's going on anymore lmao bloody hell. anyway, this is my fav chapter so far so let me know of ur feedback it motivates me to write more (and motivation is something I'm severely lacking atm) <3 love youuuus <3

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

Dean had never run so fast in his life. There were scores of voices at his tail, angry voices clutching guns. And Dean was nothing but a rabbit with a trail of foxes biting at his heel as he bounded through the length of the hotel in search of a way out.

He pulled the door open to the fire escape, and was met by the sounds of approaching voices below. He caught the eye of a soldier who rounded the staircase to face him, and a gun was raised. But as soon as the shot was fired Dean was back down the hallway again fast approaching the ever-advancing group of soldiers up the staircase from the other end.

The soldier Dean had seen at the bar was now stood at one end, another group of soldiers was stood at the other. The soldier from the bar raised his hand – a gesture to lower raised guns. And all Dean could do was stare back at them, waiting for somebody to make the first move.

“I hear you have something we want.” The soldier from the bar said clearly. “I would suggest that we trade that object for your life, but even if you refused you’d be our prisoner.”

“I don’t have anything of yours.” Dean spat. He couldn’t reach for his gun. He couldn’t shoot his way out of the situation this time. That would be suicide – the moment he laid a finger on that gun strapped to his back would be the moment they showered him in a hail of bullets. And that wasn’t how Dean was going to die – he was sure of it. He had to get back to Castiel first.

“Don’t play games with me. I heard your entire conversation. Your generals are not going to be so happy with you, are they? You have practically handed us the book we have been locking for with the added bonus of the co-ordinates to your top-secret base. You might as well give yourself up. You might as well take the easy way out.”

“Perhaps I like to play hard to get.” Dean said flatly, before propelling his entire body weight against the door of the room in front of him. It fell from it’s hinges as Dean fell down with it, and it took him only a moment to pull himself to his feet, greeted with the sight of an officer in bed with a local towns girl. She screamed, and the officer scrambled for his gun, but Dean was more concerned about the small platoon of armed enemy soldiers that were piling down the corridor after him.

He braced himself, checked his gun was still hanging across his back, and then sprinted full speed at the window. He launched himself through the glass, bringing his arms up to his face to shield his eyes from the shards that fell with him as he descended into a short free-fall, feet-first onto the paved street below.

He landed on his feet with an agonising snap, a sharp splitting pain shooting up through his right foot as he toppled forwards onto his knees just as the glass shattered almost delicately around him like snow.

He clambered to his feet silently grateful that the adrenaline was masking the true-extent of his injuries, and was rewarded with just a moment to compose himself before the shooting ensued from the window again.

Various soldiers along the street grabbed a hold of their guns, and Dean found himself sprinting towards the north-side of the village, cowering against the curb as he desperately fought to dodge the swarm of bullets that seemed to engulf him like flies.

He passed the village sign, but was too preoccupied, too frantic to count two-hundred paces north. The bullets were biting at his heel and the feeling was beginning to seep back into his ankle – it burned, it throbbed, and the ever-stretching road would have seemed relentless even without the trail of furious soldiers wanting him dead.

“GET OUT OF YOUR TREE YOU SON OF A BITCH.” Dean yelled, hoping Castiel was where he said he’d be, hoping he hadn’t been deceived yet again.

It wasn’t until a single bullet tore through Dean’s shoulder sending him flying to the ground that he saw them – a line or ten men, Castiel in their midst, dressed in the torn clothes of civilians, other men with stolen machine guns aimed at their opposition hidden in the bushes. Dean could barely find the energy within himself to keep his eyes open long enough to see it: to see the mass of men stood before him as they opened fire.

The enemy soldiers fell like flies, others turning on their heels and sprinting frantically back towards the village for back up, and all Dean could focus on was the agony that seemed to be sweeping through every vein, every artery, until it was too much for him to handle.

“Dean.” A hand to his cheek. “Stay awake.” A second pair of hands stripping him of the enemy uniform, peeling back his blood-soaked shirt to reveal the hole the bullet had eaten through his flesh. “Dean? _Dean_?”

Sometimes, Dean had learned back in ninth grade, the human body will shut down when physical pain gets too much for the individual to bare. Their body goes into shock. A survival mechanism. A clever one at that. The pain stops, the world darkens, and sometimes, only sometimes, the pain will be too much for the human mind to escape from, and the heart will stop. Well, that was how Dean explained it to Sammy, aged ten, after they were greeted with the news that their mother had been involved in a car accident. She had been alive when the ambulance came, but her heart ceased to beat by the time they reached the hospital only eight minutes later.

***

Dean woke to a feeling against his chest, light as a feather, tracing the shape of his wound as if it would somehow take the pain away. Perhaps it did, or maybe it was simply a trick of the mind. But when Dean forced his mind to awaken fully it was as if all pain had been alleviated from his body and he was floating in the air.

Through the cloudiness of his eyes Dean saw a pale hand, a delicate finger running a neat circle around the space on his shoulder where the blood persisted to soak through the bandage. His eyes joined hand to wrist, wrist to arm, arm to body…Castiel. Castiel, the traitor. Castiel, who had tricked him into giving the co-ordinates of the top-secret base to the opposition. Castiel, who had been an enemy all along.

“No.” Dean mumbled, shrugging from his touch. “You…traitor... You, you-” He tried to stand, his weight now an impossibility to carry on his damaged leg, and found himself falling onto the cold concrete ground.

***

Dean woke again this time with a bandage tightly fastened around his skull. His vision pulsated in tune with the agony as the light entered his eyes, and Castiel was again sat at his bedside.

“It wasn’t me” The German boy said desperately.

“You…you’re betrayed me. You...”

“If I wanted to betray you, I would have killed you while you slept. I could have so easily stolen that book. I have no intention of that, do you understand? That book is fuel for the fire as far as I care.”

The book. Dean reached up to his chest to feel the space against his heart where the book should be, and found his upper body devoid of shirt, jacket, and book. “Where is the-”

Castiel picked it up off a bedside table and handed it to Dean. He noticed the chains around the younger boy’s wrists that tethered him to the legs of the bench on which Dean was lying.

“Why are you chained up like that?” Dean asked, forcing himself up onto his elbows. His upper body weighed a tonne – and a sharp stabbing sensation rocketed out from the core of his wound, through his arms and across his chest. His arm collapsed underneath him, but Castiel’s hands were there to break his fall, lowering him slowly back onto his back.

“I’m still the enemy.” He said simply. “In _their_ eyes I am, anyway.”

Dean followed his gaze across the room and for the first time he noticed he was lying in what appeared to be a cellar of some description. The walls were damp and cracked and the air was thick with cigarette smoke, but it seemed Castiel’s presence had somehow distracted him from it all; as if he hadn’t cared for where they were until that moment – the only important thing being that they had managed to find each other again.

Beyond Castiel, Dean could see a group of young men with guns slung over their backs, hurrying around a collection of maps strewn across a table. Their voices were hushed and their words were quick and indecipherable French, and they did not, for even a moment, dare wasting a single second with a glance back at the pair of soldier’s at the other side of the room.

“Who are they?”

“French Resistance fighters. A partisan force.” Castiel said. He looked down at the chains around his wrists. “Honestly, these chains are nothing compared to what I know they want to do to me.”

“How on earth did you end up with them?” Dean frowned. “Did they hurt you?”

“They found me hiding in the tree, waiting for you. First they accused me of being a sniper, and then when they saw I had your bag they accused me of looting dead American soldiers’ bodies. They pointed a gun to my head and I was sure they were going to kill me, but I begged them to at least wait for you to return, to prove that I was not who they believed me to be. Thankfully one of the younger men gave me the benefit of a doubt, but the leader wanted to kill me just for being a coward. I suppose he was right about that.”

“You’re not a coward, alright?” Dean said seriously.

“Am I not? I should have come with you into that village. I would have been the perfect distraction.” He said, laughing sadly to himself. “Perhaps if I’d just walked in there, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. They would be too busy arresting me.”

“Well you would have gotten yourself killed instead. I’ve only known you for a few days and I’m sure as hell I’d rather take a bullet than let you die needlessly like that.”

Castiel looked at Dean, he looked _right_ at him, and Dean could have sworn it was the first time noticing the icy grey of his eyes again. “What even happened to you?” Castiel laughed gently. “All you had to do was make a call.”

“That’s all I did. And then my call was intercepted, and…you know the rest.”

“How did they know to listen to your phone call, though? I mean, I helped many villagers to contact others outside the village, and not once were they ever targeted. Did you speak to anybody? I told you not to speak, I told you they would –”

“I didn’t speak to anybody. I swear…I…well, actually, on my way into the hotel I was given something. But I didn’t speak…I only said ‘thank you’ – in German, of course.” Dean said, reaching down into his pocket and producing the scrunched up piece of paper he had been handed on his way into the hotel. He flattened it out across his chest and handed it to Castiel.

The younger boy’s eyes barely grazed the page before his face dropped and the colour drained from his cheeks.

“Well, what does it say?” Dean asked.

Castiel began to read, “ _Achtung! Es hat sich die Aufmerksamkeit der Kommandant Bartholomew Novak kommen, dass sein Sohn –”_

“No.” Dean said quickly, a slight wave of his hand. “Translate it to _English_.”

“Oh.” Castiel cleared his throat. “It says: _Attention! It has come to the attention of commander Bartholomew Novak that his son, Castiel Novak, has defected from his regiment, and is currently on the run from German authorities in northern France._

_It has been ordered by the commander to seize him alive and return him to the regiment of Lucifer Novak, where he will be detained until he is called to stand trial for crimes of desertion and assisting the enemy for purposes of dismantling the empire that the great leader has fought to build over these past years._

_Any soldier found to be aiding him in his escape, or found to be assisting him in the dismantling of the German Reich will be executed on sight for their crimes_.”

Castiel’s eyes refused to move from the page.

“Oh.” Was all Dean could think to say. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come with me into the village then, after all.”

Castiel scrunched the page up within his fist, and Dean watched the frustration spread quickly through his body. He stood up in a heart beat, thrashed against the pull of his chains in anger, but he was simply met by the hands of men restraining him, which only spurred his frustration on further.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let him go, okay?” Dean said quickly, forcing himself to sit. “Hurting him like that isn’t going to make this any better.”

One of the men twisted Castiel’s arms tightly behind his back and forced him to his knees.

“He’s a threat.” Of the men hissed.

“He’s harmless.” Dean said. “Let him go.”

The partisan men looked from one to another with a hint of hilarity in their eyes.

“Did you hear me? I said: let him go!”

With a sigh they released him from their grip, and sulked away after a quick shove to Castiel’s shoulder. Dean watched them slink back over to their table with a hot sensation burning at the pit of his stomach; he turned his attention back to Castiel, allowed his eyes to extinguish any hate that seemed to have been brewing within his own.

“It’s okay.” Dean said. “We’ll figure this out. I made that promise to you only days ago.”

“I know,” Castiel said sadly, pulling his knees up to his chin and twisting his body to sit back against the bench he was chained to. Dean shifted his own weight off of the bench, and placed himself carefully down beside the other boy, ensuring his damaged foot remained extended out in front of him. “I know.”

“But right now we need to get back on the road. We need to keep going. We’re never gonna make it out of here if we’re tagging along with a group of resistance fighters; Nazis will be on their tails and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

Castiel nodded.

Dean sat up, looked over at the cluster of partisans around the table. “Hey, excuse me, _monsieurs_?”

The oldest of the group looked up and over at Dean nonchalantly. “What?”

“It’s time for us to leave. Thanks for your hospitality and everything but, like, we’ve got stuff to do.”

“Nobody has _stuff_ to do during a war like this. You either fight and die, or wait and die. Anything else is a lost cause.” The Frenchman said quickly. His voice was hoarse and his accent thick – the work of the war, no doubt.

“Where is the optimism?” Dean huffed. “Well, can I at least use a phone, a radio?”

“We can’t trust you not to give away our location.”

“Come on, man! You must trust me enough to have not put me in _chains_.”

“You have a broken ankle. We do not think you capable of running.”

“Just let me radio out to my base; I need to let them know that the enemy is coming. Do you want some of the most skilled solders in America to die because I couldn’t warn them? Maybe you don’t trust me because I was running with a Nazi, but we all want the same goddamn thing – for the war to be over. And the war won’t end if you let my generals die, and it certainly won’t end if you don’t let me free to deliver this book.”

The old man laughed, paced over towards where Dean and Castiel were sat up against the bench and crouched before them. “I had a look in that book while you were out.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Those co-ordinates you were given for your base? _Bullshit_. They give the precise location of the middle of Channel. Those top-secret Nazi locations? _Outdated_. Do you think your generals give a damn about a book of locations for bases that have been relocated three times over since written down? And do you think they’d dare give away their location if they knew you had enemy soldiers sent to track you down, to follow you back to your secret base?” He eyed Castiel closely. “You’re a fool, kid. If you ever begin to wonder where you went so wrong, just take a quick look to your left.”

Dean tried to stand, quickly remembered his damaged ankle, and sat himself back down on the bench. “I had a mission. And I’m going to complete it. Let us go.”

“Your mission was nothing but a decoy, boy. A decoy to make the enemy believe that you had something that put their empire at risk, to distract them from attempting to locate your base.” The old man shook his head slowly, laughing almost with humility. “You were never meant to make it back to wherever you had come from alive. And now trailing that thing around with you? You’re a dead man walking.”

Castiel shifted uncomfortably; Dean couldn’t tell if it were from guilt or dejection, or a mixture of both. Could Castiel really be capable of betraying him like this?

“If it were up to me you’d both be dead; _you_ , because I do not care for your cause, and _him_ because he is a traitor.

“Just let us go.” Dean muttered through gritted teeth. “I’ll deal with Castiel; leave his chains on, I’ll decide his punishment for myself.”

“You have no authority over me, or any other man in this room. Now shut up, and let us find a way to help put an end to this hell.” The man spat, walking quickly back his table in frustration. His frustration was expected, but his lack of care was only understandable to those who had been a part of this fight for a moment too long. It was May, 1942, and anyone would be a fool to believe the end would come anytime soon, and the world would be relieved of agony once and for all. Things are never so easy as we believe them to be.

***

It was an early hour of the morning, Dean could only tell from the little light that escaped through a crack near the ceiling as he laid motionless unable to let sleep pass through him, when he felt Castiel take his hand where it had been hanging over the edge of the bench. It startled him. It was wrong, but it wasn’t. It was a comfort, a dare. It was so much, but nothing at all. And then those words lighter than a whisper, so light Dean was unsure as to whether they were even meant to be heard at all: “ _I’m scared_.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos & comment any feedback you may have, I'm open to anything, good or bad <333


End file.
